Thursday, August 5, 2010

Brent Lang of The Wrap just doesn't get it. Plain and simple. In his provocatively-titled piece 'Zac Efron and the Incredible Shrinking Teen Idol Stars', Land submits that the newest generation of young stars (Zac Efron, Robert Pattinson, Miley Cyrus, etc) have disappointed at the box office even as the numbers he uses fail to bear that out. Once again, a pundit has fallen into the classic trap: Because a movie star's latest movie has failed to match up with his or her all-time best performances, said actor's star must be fading. But it fails to take into account two obvious factors: not every film an actor makes is identical in appeal and marketability, and a star cannot be expected to top their previous best every time out of the gate.

As I've said any number of occasions, movie stars are worth certain paydays for certain projects.

The absurd idea that a small intimate drama starring a given actor should be expected to perform as well as a crowd-pleasing genre picture is asinine. In fact, such expectations actually discourage actors from stretching or trying artier or more challenging works.

Sure Remember Me 'only' made $55 million worldwide (on a budget of just $16 million), but that means that $55 million worth of tickets were sold completely on the shoulders of one Robert Pattinson (quick, raise your hands if you saw that one for Pierce Brosnan or Chris Cooper....?).

Thus, quite obviously, Robert Pattinson shouldn't be getting paid nearly as much for Remember Me as he did for Twilight Saga: Eclipse. He didn't, so the film's box office should not be judged on the same level.

Pattinson and Efron could spend their entire careers doing rip-offs of, respectively Twilight and High School Musical. The fact that they are instead making more challenging pictures, and still posting decent returns, means that they are absolutely bankable names on a reasonable budget

Star power isn't opening something that is already highly appealing to a mass audience that has the benefit of your name on the poster. Star power is scoring a reasonable or better opening weekend for a film that has nothing to offer except your name on the poster. On that scale, Miley Cyrus, Zac Efron, and Robert Pattinson are genuine movie stars.

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